Every athlete dreams of it as a kid: representing their country on a national level. And for most, it is just a dream.

With nearly 20,000 high school field hockey players across America, it is virtually impossible to make your way up the pipeline to one day represent your country on the national team. But for one Hershey High School freshman, that dream became a reality.

Freshman Maddie Zimmer has had a field hockey stick in her hand since first grade and has never looked back. This past July, Zimmer was selected out of hundreds of girls from all over the country to compete in a series of tournaments and training camps put on by the USA Field Hockey organization to choose a final team of 24 players to represent the United States on their Under 17 Junior National team.

After months of training in places like Houston, Texas and Chapel Hill North Carolina, it was finally here. The moment they had all trained for for ten long months: Ireland.

The USA junior national team traveled to Dublin, Ireland to compete against the Irish junior national team in a three game tour from April 12 through April 18. However, due to cost and playing time, only 18 girls of the 24 on the team were chosen to travel.

“It was the best feeling in the world,” said Zimmer when describing the day she found out she would be traveling on the Ireland tour. “I would consider it one of the best days of my life.”

Zimmer, along with her teammates, started the extensive selection process in January of 2016 when they attended USA sponsored training seasons, or “futures.” Zimmer was then selected to play in the regional futures tournament with the best players in Pennsylvania.

Following regionals, Zimmer was invited to play in the National futures championship in June of 2016, which was followed by an invitation to attend the junior national camp to train with her possible future teammates. Following all of the hours on end of training, tournaments, games, and camps, in December 2016, Zimmer finally learned that she had earned her spot on the national team.

“I honestly can’t say I am (nervous),” said Zimmer, “I really don’t know what to expect, I’ve never played against anyone other than American teams,” said Zimmer. “This is all brand new and I’m still relatively young, so I don’t have anything to lose.

The team played three games during their seven days in Ireland with two training sessions in between; which left plenty of time to go sightseeing. But the one thing that Zimmer was most excited about, she admits was getting her uniform, “I can’t wait to get the USA uniform, I’ll be able to be like ‘oh my gosh I’m actually playing for the USA in a different country,’ that just seems so weird and I’m so excited for that!”

The junior national U17 team went undefeated during their time in Ireland.